6 Ways Sony Can Maintain PSN as the Gold Standard on the PS4

As the Dean of PlayStation University, I love the PlayStation brand. With that being said, it’s often easy to overlook the flaws of the things you love. This article is to serve as a critical evaluation of Sony’s PSN and as a follow-up to my previous article from last week, “6 Reasons Why Xbox Live is Failing 10 Years Later.” The success and innovation of Xbox Live not only brought online gaming to the forefront of consoles, but it has revolutionized the way people play games. For better or for worse, most games sit down on the couch these days and hop on their favorite multiplayer game to play with friends or dominate strangers online. PlayStation Network took a slightly different approach to the online space, but it’s hard to argue that PSN would exist as it does today without Xbox Live’s inception 10 years ago. This article is not intended to say that PSN is failing now, or that there is anything fundamentally wrong with it in the status quo, but if they go into the next generation without offering at least some of the upgrades I mention, then I have severe doubts for the success of PSNs future. In order to maintain PSN as the Gold Standard in console gaming, Sony should consider the following. Trust me, I’m the Dean.

6) Party Chat

Believe it or not, most gamers have a solid and healthy group of friends. Better yet, those same friends often play games with one another. Even better yet, when humans talk to each other using their voices, it’s not only a more beneficial and productive friendship, but it makes teamwork and cooperation infinitely easier. Before you get too riled up, I understand that the PS3 supports both text-based party chat and in-game voice chat. This does not solve the problem because first of all, no one uses text chat. Ever. Secondly, relying on in-game voice chat is 90% of the time worse if you have other options presented to you. Sometimes you and your friends don’t want to hear the other players and instead of muting everyone, it’s better to just have your own party chat room.

The biggest issue though, is when you aren’t playing the same game. For example, if you’re playing the campaign mode of a game or a game that is strictly single player and you see a bunch of your buddies online playing some Killzone together, it’s frustrating. If you want to talk to everyone you have to either call them on the phone (who uses a phone to call anyone nowadays?) or join the game and try to navigate your way into their party and then hope the other gamers aren’t too pissy about you talking to your friends. If I was in the middle of playing Last of Us but wanted to talk to a group of friends, I’m basically stuck on the PS3. This might not matter to a lot of people and if it doesn’t, ignore the feature once it is implemented. Thankfully the Vita has this feature already, so this one is all but guaranteed on the PS4.

Scrolling and sifting through stuff is great!

5) Usability of the User Interface

It would seem intuitive that the “user” interface would be both “user-friendly” and “usable.” However, Sony has unnecessarily complicated much of the day-to-day things gamers like to do on their PS3s. The recent update to the PlayStation Store improved things, in my opinion, but many of my issues lie with the very Cross-Media Bar (XMB) interface itself. Instead of using a series of eye-catching and easy to scan menus, Sony opted for a line of content areas (like Settings, Music, Games, Account, etc) with a series of options under each. The design is fairly clean and simple and allows for some great customization of the icons and the background, but what was the true purpose? I don’t want to have to wait for all of the game my friends are playing to load just to check a message. I don’t want to wait 5 minutes for my trophies to sync just so I can go see what that trophy I unlocked was for. I don’t want to have to exit a game I’m playing just to change a few settings or check something in the PlayStation Store.

I want ease-of-use. When I turn on my PS4, I want to be able to jump into a game, look at my trophy list, my friends list, my messages, etc all very easily. I don’t want to have to memorize which tab a setting is under – the XMB is clunky and out-of-date. The interface of the PlayStation Vita is extremely gimmicky with its bubbles and doesn’t really move in any type of productive direction, so I expect something pretty grand and sweepingly different for the PS4.

About the author

David Jagneaux

I am The Dean (Editor-in-Chief) of PlayStation University. As a lifelong lover of both playing games and communicating, I knew that gaming journalism was the perfect fit. Over the years I have honed these skills in order to distinguish myself as an ambitious and creative writer passionate about gaming and the games industry.

Readers Comments (5)

add a ton more features at sony’s expense….but keep it free still? yeah not very likely to happen….ive never understood people obsession with cross game chat,why would i ever want to talk with someone not playing the same game as me?you act as if muting annoying people in a lobby is some difficult task…if youre not willing to press 1 button then obviously that person isnt all that annoying to begin with…security,eh,sure the hack was not their finest hour,but xbox live accounts get hacked ALL the time…i know people that have lost half a dozen accounts due to hackers…sure more indie games are always nice…and installs are not a big deal,the longest pf them last what,6 minutes? usually spend that time getting all my stuff together(food,drinks,bong hit or two:)and by the time im done the game is ready to go…but back to the original point,implementing all these things would almost guarantee that psn would no longer be free,perhaps not a full on $60 a year,but some kind of charge,and that sir is no bueno

The XMB is the easiest thing to use but like you said its outdated I always wanted a xmb remake keep the format just make it flashy themes only take you so far. Security? What happened to psn blows and sony dropped the ball no doubt but to this day I have yet to hear about someone having their credit card info used. I read an article some time back about an xbox hacker talking about how easy it is to take over peoples xbl accounts. Cross game chat? Yeah it was the craze back then but if im not playing the same game as my friends I have nothing go talk to them about and if im playing uncharted or the last of us. I do t want to hear anything but the game. In game chat is all I need. As for psn to be free im all for it gaming online shouldnt cost another fee access to the store and buying apps should remain free but lets say sony does incorporate cross game chat sony has playstation plus as a paid service to plug into. ps+ is good as is adding features would be better as long as people can game for free.